The purpose of this blog had been to serve as a kind of record of engagement primarily with selected works of Shakespeare and to invite others along for comment or conversation. Below is the result of that engagement, to be renewed at a future date.
Love Lessons … and Language in “Love’s Labor’s Lost”
Despite its alliteration, the title of this early Shakespeare comedy does not exactly roll off the tongue. It trips and twists the tongue. Oh so innocently, it would seem, and yet I’m wondering now, having come to the end of the drama, if it’s a kind of trap meant to catch the eye and the mind.
Cover image and above: Princess of France, [character in Shakespeare’s] Love’s Labor’s Lost, by artist John William Wright (1802–1848), engraving by printmaker William Henry Mote. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0).
Despite its alliteration, the title of this early Shakespeare comedy does not exactly roll off the tongue. It trips and twists the tongue. Innocently, maybe, and yet I’m wondering now, having come to the end of the drama, if it’s a kind of trap meant to catch the eye and the mind. It’s suggestive and elusive. Part riddle, part nursery rhyme, it’s playful in a she-sells-seashells kind of way. Love’s Labor’s Lost. What exactly does this mean? Having trouble getting my head around it, simple meaning keeping its distance, I look to the apostrophes.
Guides to grammar tell us the apostrophe is used to indicate the possessive case, contractions, and omitted letters. Clearly, only the first applies; still, knowing this doesn’t immediately help. “Love’s Labor” might be understood to mean the effort of a would-be lover to woo another—for example, the writing of sonnets or the singing of songs to kindle a reciprocal affection in the object of desire. This is the work of love and seems straightforward but the meaning of the second part, as joined with the first, is harder to grasp. I realize now it’s because of the second apostrophe. If the title had only one apostrophe and read “Love’s Labors Lost,” though slightly odd as titles go, one could make the jump to understand this as referencing efforts toward love that have been wasted and unfruitful. “Labor’s Lost” taken as a separate element, considered alone, requires a bit of mental adjustment—at least for me. If the apostrophe here again indicates the possessive case, we must see “Lost” as somehow owned or possessed by “Labor.” It helps to imagine “Labor” a kind of person. We might then see the “Lost” as its children or its thoughts or, just for example, its sheep—as in Little Bo Peep’s Lost. Labor’s lost efforts or lost time or something along those lines. But maybe I make too much of an apostrophe?
Ferdinand, King of Navarre, [character in Shakespeare’s] Love’s Labor’s Lost, watercolor, 1891, by Edward Hamilton Bell. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0).
Looking to the play itself, it’s clear that language and games are central to this unusual work. In case you don’t know it or haven’t read it, the set up goes like this: Ferdinand, the king of Navarre, and his attending lords, Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine, all in the flush of young adulthood, determine to achieve everlasting fame and glory, and perhaps the virtues that learning might bring, by dedicating themselves to study for a period of three years, during which, according to their sworn pact, they are to keep in a kind of seclusion—removed from those things that might tempt them from their lofty goal. They are to limit their meals to once a day; and, one day in a week, to fast entirely. Sleep too is to be curtailed, cut to no more than three hours per night. But the hardest charge is to see no women. (Women, with beautiful Shakespearean irony, will be the chief educators here and the source of whatever knowledge the king and his cohort manage to come by during the course of the play.) Berowne, the most eloquent protestor to these conditions, sums up the state of affairs:
“O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep, / Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep.” (I.i. 47–48)
He has agreed to study, not to these other restrictions, he says; he agreed only to stay and read beside the king and the others for three years, but Ferdinand—and Longaville, in support—will have none of it. And the involved parties debate the matter.
Longaville: “You swore to that, Berowne, and to the rest.”
Berowne: “By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest. / What is the end of study, let me know.”
King: “Why, that to know which else we should not know.”
Berowne: “Things hid and barr’d (you mean) from common sense.”
King: “Ay, that is study’s godlike recompense.” (53–58)
It is interesting to consider this “end of study,” a reward or fruit worthy of a god. It also smacks of original sin.
Eden, In the Morning of Creation. Plate no. 1 from The Beautiful Story. Philadelphia, PA, and Toronto, Canada: C. R. Parish & Co., 1888.
Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil and, as is well known, were kicked out of paradise for it, lest they “take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” (Gen. 4:22). Such an aspiration—to be like a god—can only be met with failure, and indeed that’s what our young king meets. His failure, which comes early and quickly in the form of the Princess of France and her three attending ladies, Rasaline, Maria, and Katherine, is an intellectual disappointment and the inevitable consequence of lusty youth, which is not eager to be cloistered.
Love’s Labor’s Lost, Princess, Rosaline, &c. Print (c. 1830s?) by W. F. Starling from a drawing by artist William Hamilton. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0).
The Princess of France has come to speak with the king on business of state; she cannot be ignored. And yet his oath would have him ignore her. He finds, in his mind, a kind of loophole and middle ground. He will attend to her and welcome her outside his house—as if he only needed to keep to his oath when in his cloister and behind his walls. Boyet, attending lord to the princess, reports this to her:
“He rather means to lodge you in the field, / Like one that comes here to besiege his court, /Than seek a dispensation for his oath, / To let you enter his [unpeopled] house.” (II, i, 85–88).
The princess and her entourage are no army intent upon war, as we know, and yet it is clear that war there will be—or if not quite war a kind of melee in this mini battle of the sexes.
The king greets the princess, in his mind most graciously, with salutatory bombast like a dumb cannon without cannonball: “Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre.” (II, i, 90). The princess fires back: “‘Fair’ I give you back again, and ‘welcome’ / I have not yet. The roof of this court is too high to / be yours, and welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine.”
Immediately the princess begins to teach the king something of the absurdity of his notions and the immaturity of his logic, which doesn’t quite hold. Given the youth of the king and his friends and the fact that they are not indeed monks, his idea to be cloistered and deprived to varying degrees of sleep, food, and women is absurd; and it is equally ridiculous to call the space between the sky and the ground his court.
Of course, the king and his lords are already beaten, and the rest of the play counts the ways. Berowne, who never quite bought into their severe pact, gives an articulate explanation for their failure in act four:
“Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O, let us embrace!
As true we are as flesh and blood can be.
The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face:
Young blood doth not obey an old decree.
We cannot cross the cause why we were born;
Therefore all hands must we be forsworn.” (IV, iii, 210–215)
Ferdinand himself admits his failure, and invites the princess into his house; but she’s no longer interested. The king comes by his notions too quickly, and must be taught a lesson; he must also prove he is worthy of the affection he now so clearly desires:
Princess: “Now by my maiden honor, yet as pure / As the unsullied lily, I protest, / A world of torments though I should endure, / I would not yield to be your house’s guest: / So much I hate a breaking cause to be / Of heavenly oaths, vow’d with integrity.” (V, ii, 351–356)
Such a fickle fellow is not to be trusted; or, at least, he—and the others—must prove their worth; each suitor—the king to the princess, and respective lords to respective ladies—will be tested with a penance to last one year. This will ensure that they can indeed keep to oaths that matter. If at the end of that year they prove true, they will have that which they truly desire. Not abstract yearning knowledge but rather the hands of those whom they imagine, by end of play, they hold so dear. We can only guess if they’ll succeed, for the time before them, before the potential satisfaction of their desires, is, as Berowne proclaims: “…too long for a play.”
On Coffins, Briefly
What is it about coffins? Boat-like, they suggest travel as much as they do an invitation to repose, with elegant lines and careful carpentry. They might be sealed against invading waters, at least temporarily, and, so enabled, float un-sinking upon such frightful rivers of archetypal memory and the mind as Styx and Acheron, allowing for navigation in the gray borderlands between life and death.
Stone sarcophagus taken out of tomb at Thebes by the Earl of Belmore, Feb. 1818. Hand-colored chromolithograph. George Scharf, artist (1788–1860); Charles Joseph Hullmandel, lithographer, 1789–1850. Issued in 1882 by J. Murry, Publisher, London. General Research Division, The New York Public Library. New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 22, 2023.
What is it about coffins? Boat-like, they suggest travel as much as they do an invitation to repose, with elegant lines and careful carpentry. They might be sealed against invading waters, at least temporarily, and, so enabled, float un-sinking upon such frightful rivers of archetypal memory and the mind as Styx and Acheron, allowing for navigation in the gray borderlands between life and death.
Indeed, a natural affinity between water and so-purposed wood is hard to miss and has been widely observed, with examples from literature rising prominently on the tide. Most conspicuous among them is Queequeg’s coffin in Moby-Dick, where the analogy is made explicit, as Ishmael, the book’s eloquent narrator, recounts:
“[Queequeg] called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He added that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket; and all the more congenial to him, a whaleman, that like a whaleboat, these coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim ages.” (Moby-Dick, Chapter CX)
Richard Basehart as Ishmael floating with Queequeg’s Coffin in John Huston's film Moby-Dick (1954), photograph Erich Lessing for Magnum Agency.
And then there’s Dracula, who famously makes the voyage from his ancient Carpathian homeland to the land of Shakespeare in the belly of a ship, nestled within the close embrace of his body-long box—a vessel within a vessel—the count at once resting, extending his already long undead life, and journeying.
Max Schreck as Count Orlok rising from his coffin below deck on the Demeter in F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony in Horror (1922), an unauthorized and unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The notion of coffin as vehicle for journeying and life-extension is carried further in the work of magicians and illusionists, who employ their coffin-like cabinets to suggest mutability of matter and the possibility of transformation (“the metamorphosis,” “the vanishing man,”) as well as the promise of immortality (“sawing a woman in half,” “the sword box”).
“Thurston, Kellar's Successor: The prisoner of Canton,” 1908. Lithograph. Publisher: Strobridge Litho Co. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 23, 2023.
“Professor Herrmann” (1923). Egyptian Hall Museum collection, Pasadena, California.
Harry Houdini, “overboard box escape” (ca. 1910–1926). Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 22, 2023.
But, of course, the idea of coffin as magical vessel of transformation and transit is as old as civilization itself, with Egypt having set the standard—their body-boats of stone still with us today, having floated on the seas of time like messages in bottles landing up on the strange shores of our museums, their messages carved in hieroglyphics on their sides.
Howard Carter (left), 1873–1939, and unidentified man seated beside coffin of King Tutankhamen, removing the consecration oils, which covered the third or innermost coffin, 1926. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Such Things as Dreams are Made Of, uh …, On
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” spoken by Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca,” is one of the best-known lines in movies. Only slightly less well known is that one at the end of “The Maltese Falcon” concerning dreams, desire, and the frustrated quest for treasure. Have you considered the source quotation, written centuries earlier, by Shakespeare in “The Tempest”?
Cover image: Ariel on a Bat’s Back, Watercolor by artist Louis Rhead (1857–1926). Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0). Above: "Portrait in Noir (An Impression of Mary Astor in 'The Maltese Falcon')," Oil on Canvas, 2007, by the author.
The Maltese Falcon, one of my all-time favorite movies, ends beautifully, all the bad guys rounded up, with the final scene showing Brigid O'Shaughnessy (played by Mary Astor)—murderer, seducer, manipulator, with big sad eyes—looking out through the metal gates of an old-time elevator: a pre-vision of her future behind bars. Then: “the end,” in elegant white script letters, as the music swells (tuba, bass drum, trumpets) and the picture fades. The penultimate scene, however, is somehow less conclusive—and, enchantingly, more suggestive.
Detective Polhaus (played by Ward Bond) holds a statuette, less than two-feet high: the figure of a bird, a falcon, painted black. It is the prize around which the movie has circled—the goal and yet, as well, in the term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, a MacGuffin: it is not what it seems and the story is much less about the black bird than what a nefarious and wonderfully talk-happy (see TCM.com “I Like to Talk”) cast of characters will do to get it—and what they imagine it to be.
“It’s heavy,” Polhaus observes, cradling the statuette like a baby. “What is it?”
Private detective Samuel Spade (played by Humphrey Bogart), touching the falcon, caressing it with two fingers, then taking it tenderly, possessively, as if it were soft and not hard and weighty like a dumbbell, replies: “It’s, uh…the stuff that dreams are made of.”
Ward Bond and Humphry Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, Warner Bros., 1941.
Perhaps only slightly less well known than “Here’s looking at you, kid,” this is one of Bogie’s signature lines and probably his most evocative. What does he mean? The stuff that dreams are made of? The statuette that he sweetly taps and jealously retrieves from the policeman was supposed to be a jewel encrusted treasure and not the lump of worthless metal that it turns out to be; it represents a kind of alchemy in reverse: a vision of gold and rubies become common lead. And yet Spade is wistful, gentle with this “treasure,” as if he is protecting something bigger, something more than what we see. For him, even though this prize is revealed to be a disappointment, it holds yet some magic. In suggestion? In those visions the search for it engendered? On one level, we might understand this thing presented as but a decoy, and the treasure, the priceless and true falcon, something still to be attained and yet to be found, as is indeed proposed by Kaspar Gutman, the arch-villain and suave criminal-gang ringleader (played by Sydney Greenstreet in all his orotund mellifluousness). But the actual treasure seems to me to be somehow beside the point. Perhaps it is the quest or the dream that matters—this is something available to all of us; and this the daily bread of the private detective and man of action, Samuel Spade, who needs sleep, sometimes, but would be nothing without the quest, his call to action.
The phrase, the line, or a version of it, of course, comes to us centuries earlier in The Tempest, Shakespeare’s curious and powerful play that’s also filled with evildoers—and, within which, so much of dreams is made.
The Tempest, Act I, Scene I, engraving, 1709, Jacob Tonson (16–56?–1736), publisher. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
It’s perhaps only a coincidence, though a fun one, that in both the The Maltese Falcon and The Tempest a kind of shipwreck plays a dramatic role. In the Maltese Falcon, it’s a vessel called La Paloma that goes down, somewhere toward the middle of the story. Captained by a man named Jacoby (played very briefly and without credit by Walter Huston, actor and father of the film’s director, John Huston)—a one-time partner of Gutman’s gang who briefly holds the falcon, delivering it wrapped in old newspapers to Samuel Spade, before dying in the private detective’s office—the ship is swallowed by flames on a San Francisco wharf as it sinks into the darkness of the bay. The sunken ship here is just collateral damage and not central to the plot, and yet it raises the stakes, and the excitement, as its captain adds another body to the count (which begins, at least in the film, with the death of Spade’s partner, Miles Archer). The shipwreck in The Tempest, on the other hand, starts the whole thing off and sets the stage for what follows. It is a wreck, though, in which there is not actually a wreck: a disaster that only appears to happen or that happens only as an illusion or in a dream—and yet, it is a dream and a wreck with the power to transform whole worlds and lives.
The Tempest, [Stephano on a Wine Cask) drawing by Robert Anning Bell (1863–1933), artist. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
A witness to the apparent disaster, fifteen year-old Miranda is tormented by what she has seen and what she believes her father, the magician Prospero, has caused:
“If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them…
…O! I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer. A brave vessel
(Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her)
Dash’d all to pieces! O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perishe’d.
Had I been any God of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or er
It should the good ship so have swallow’d and
…the souls within her.” (I.ii.,1–11)
[Prospero and Miranda, in] The Tempest [Act I, Scene 2, from a set of 12 engravings], published by C. Knight (1825). Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
Prospero’s “art” is such that it can effect such extraordinary natural tumults as the tempest that appears to sink a ship and its crew and passengers, convincing the victims themselves that they have experienced this disaster. And yet, as we later learn, not a hair on any head was harmed in the making of the storm; and the ship is safely stowed away, its crew magicked to slumber through most of the play below deck, ship moored in hidden harbor, while the main cast of characters appears ashore, in discrete and separate groupings, in various states of uncertainty.
This is a play rich in dreams, a tribute to the powers of imagination; individuals are put to sleep, under the magician’s spell, much like a storyteller enchants her audience, and naturally they dream—and yet, in this play, it is hard to tell dream from reality.
The above image, depicting a scene from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (III.iii.19), Enter several strange shapes, bringing in a banquet … inviting the King, etc., to eat, was created by artist Arthur Rackham (1867–1939); ink and watercolor drawing. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
Perhaps the most vivid dream, if perhaps a waking one, occurs toward the end of Act III. Conjured up by Prospero with the aid of airy spirits, a group of “strange shapes” presents a banquet to the main group of the shipwrecked, which includes Alonso, King of Naples, and Antonio, Prospero’s treacherous brother, the usurping Duke of Milan. There is solemn and unnusual music. Alonso: “What harmony is this?” Gonzalo: “Marvelous sweet music!” The strange shapes carry their feast and dance about with gentle motions and salutations, inviting the king to eat. A fantastic and mouth-watering sight. Sebastian, the evil-intentioned brother of Alonso, who would have Alonso’s throne, sums up the magical miracle:
“A living drollery. Now I will believe
That there are unicorns; that in Arabia
There is one tree, the phoenix’ throne, one phoenix
At this hour reigning there.” (III.iii.21-24)
And, as they settle to repast, licking their lips in anticipation, there is thunder and lightning and the spirit Ariel claps his wings upon the table. And the banquet vanishes. A disappointment and a kind of torment, imposed upon these men of sin, more a nightmare than a dream. They draw their swords in futile show of protest, and are mocked by Ariel and the other spirits—and then are left, “knit up in their distractions,” to be confined, shortly afterward, by magic and unable to budge, till freed by Prospero’s command.
Still there is a festive and ultimately light-hearted air. This is a play in which the central mover, the magician/artist/scholar Prospero, began, perhaps, with designs toward revenge but who finally opts for forgiveness instead: “The rare action is / In virtue than in vengeance….My charms I’ll break, their senses I’ll restore, / And they shall be themselves.” (V.i.25-32)
It’s somewhat unbelievable—how Prospero forgives—particularly such figures as Sebastian, who only moments earlier plotted to murder King Alonso, his own brother, to say nothing of Prospero’s own treacherous brother, Antonio. And yet there is a dream logic and the power of magic and a lesson of some kind, if only we can see and understand.
It’s interesting to compare Bogart’s famous line with the one used here. “It’s the stuff that dreams are made of,” said Samuel Spade. And, looking at the falcon, we think of treasure. Of desire. Of happiness and longing and frustrated quests and even, perhaps, illusion. But the original line, in The Tempest, is about more than desire and longing; it’s about life itself.
Prospero has given in to vanity and shown his powers to his daughter, Miranda, and her suitor, Ferdinand, son of the king of Milan; he has orchestrated a kind of wedding ceremony for them, performed by spirits and seeming gods. And then, becoming distracted, he thinks of those who would usurp him yet again, this time in his island kingdom—plotters to the island throne involve Caliban, the island’s indigenous resident; Trinculo, a jestor; and Stephano, the drunken butler. Ferdinand sees, in Prospero, “some passion / That works him strongly.” Miranda, surprised, proclaims never till this day has she seen her father touched with anger. But Prospero, registering their discomfort, and remembering his power and position, comforts them. His inclinations toward peace are irresistible; he will pull back the curtain on his powers, before closing them forever—it is time for the wizard to prepare for leaving Oz.
To Ferdinand, Prospero speaks:
You do look, my son, in a mov’d sort,
As if you were dismay’d, be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors
(As I foretold you) were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And like the baseless fabric of this vision
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall disolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep…” (IV.i.146-158)
We are such stuff. We are the subject. In the Maltese Falcon, it’s the object—the falcon, the treasure, the goal. It’s the stuff that dreams are made of. In The Tempest, it is we who are the stuff. Dreams are made on us, we are made of dreams. We are made up of dreams, of the stories that we tell, and what we imagine—and the magic spells we cast. And, before and after dreams, we sleep; sleep gives birth to dreams, to life, to magic. Our life is rounded. And what gives it shape is its beginning—and its end.
Who’s the Bigger Drama Queen, Cleopatra or … Antony?
Whatever else she may or may not be, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, of The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, is a drama queen. To give her her supreme and royal due, we might even call her the drama queen or proto–drama queen, for she has long epitomized the type—even before we knew what to call it. But she’s not the only drama queen here…
Cover image: Detail of drawing in ink and opaque, Antony and Cleopatra, by A. M. Faulkner, 1906. Above: Detail of image depicting Act III, Scene IX, Antony and Cleopatra, from the original painting by Henry Tresham; engraved by G.S. & I.G. Facius, 1795. Both images: Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
Whatever else she may or may not be, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, of The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, is a drama queen. To give her her supreme and royal due, we might even call her the drama queen or proto–drama queen, for she has long epitomized the type—even before we knew what to call it.
Antony and Cleopatra, from a set of seven original drawings by Byam Shaw, ca. 1900. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
But what do we mean when we say “drama queen”? Wordsmith.org offers this: “noun: someone who is prone to behaving in an exaggeratedly dramatic way: creating unnecessary scenes or making a big deal of small matters.” Google provides a yet more succinct definition via Oxford Languages: “a person who habitually responds to situations in a melodramatic way.”
Cleopatra consistently fits the bill. Early in the play, left to pine for her Antony (who has returned to Rome following the death of his wife), a messenger arrives from him, for her, in Egypt. She greets the messenger, eager for happy tidings. But before the messenger can speak three words, she stirs up a scene rife with sighs and exclamations:
“Antonio’s dead! If thou say so, villain,
Thou kill’st thy mistress; but well and free,
If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss—a hand that kings
Have lipp’d, and trembled kissing.” (II, v, 25–30)
In the space of two sentences, she swings marvelously from near-death experience to an offer of abundance in gold and the faintest hint of sensual pleasure.
Having, however, at last learned the worst from the messenger—not that Antony is well or ill, but rather that he has married Cesar’s sister, Octavia—she strikes the messenger down, warning him away while hurling potent and hateful words upon him:
“…Hence,
Horrible villain, or I’ll spurn thine eyes
Like balls before me; I’ll unhair thy head,
Thou shalt be whipt with wire, and stew’d in brine,
Smarting in ling’ring pickle.”
Provoked by his continuing refusal to provide good news, she draws a knife and threatens his life. What can he do but say, don’t kill the messenger, and run? High drama. Melodrama? Wonderful. But she is not alone in displaying such tendencies. Antony has an inclination this way, too.
Antony and Cleopatra, from a set of seven original drawings by Byam Shaw, ca. 1900. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
In battle at sea against Cesar, now Antony’s enemy, Antony turns tail and sets his sails to flee, following in the wake of Cleopatra—whose sixty ships have already left the fight. The day and the future is won by Cesar. Antony, the once mighty warrior, is undone, tied as he is to Cleopatra. Disgraced and ashamed, he comes ashore in Alexandria and he laments his disgrace with eloquent extravagance:
“Hark, the land bids me tread no more upon’t
It is asham’d to bear me …
I have fled myself, and have instructed cowards
To run and show their shoulders …
…O,
I follow’d that I blush to look upon.
My very hairs do mutiny; for the white
Reprove the brown for rashness…”
Do we call a man a drama queen? Of course, we do. For fun. With a smile. It’s interesting to note that any cursory search into the origins of the term will turn up its (apparently) earliest documented usage, which happens to be in connection with a man. The expression appears in an article of November 1923, “The Chances for Father,” in House & Garden, and concerns the need of a man, as head of household, to have his own room—a place for his hobbies: “If he is thwarted in his effort to enjoy them, he may either go to the dogs or the drama queens, become short-tempered, sullen, grouchy and eventually feel that, in a way, he is a failure.”
The suggestion of failure seems to be at the heart of it. Understanding he has lost, believing Cleopatra dead, Antony calls upon his friend Eros to put him out of his misery and kill him; but Eros instead kills himself. Antony waxes magniloquent:
“Thrice-nobler than myself!
Thou teachest me, O valient Eros, what
I should, and thou coudst not….
…I will be
A bridegroom in my death, and run into’t
As to a lover’s bed…” (IV, xiv, 95–102)
…and falls on his sword. But still he doesn’t die.
Antony and Cleopatra, by Frank Howard, printmaker, 1828. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
He lives long enough to learn that Cleopatra is yet still alive; that her “death” had been an act to move him to pity, so that she might enjoy his sadness for her, but it goes too far and she is not quick enough to stop the tragic results of her game. His soldiers take him to Cleopatra, where she is locked in her monument—which will be her tomb. And it is there that they battle for the biggest-drama-queen crown:
Antony: “I am dying, Egypt, dying; only
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.” (IV, xiv, 18–20)
Cleopatra: “…Die when thou has liv’d,
Quicken with kissing. Had my lips that power,
Thus would I wear them out.” (37–39)
Antony dies, leaving Cleopatra to face Cesar, who wants to take her back to Rome to parade her around, a spectacle. The queen of spectacles, this will not do, opting famously instead for the “joy of the worm,” the deadly kiss upon her breast of the asp, and immortality.
So who wins the crown? It seems clear to me. Antony’s end is dramatic and good, but, really, it can’t compare to death by self-inflicted snakebite just above the heart.
The Death of Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra, Act V, Scene 2), steel engraving mid to late 19th century). Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
Chatbot Shakespeare
Can you identify the play from which the following soliloquy fragment was drawn?
“…Oh, what a tangled web …
Can you identify the play from which the following soliloquy fragment was drawn?
“…Oh, what a tangled web
Is this, that I am caught in, with no way to ebb
The tide of fate that bears me on its crest
To what unknown and fateful end?...”
Sound at all familiar? How about this:
“…Shall I be doomed, as are all living things
To suffer pain, and sorrow, and the stings
Of mortal coil? …”
If this pains you, it’s because you’re human and love the poetry of beautiful words put together in a way that allows them to resound with both music and meaning. Of course, there’s something wrong in the lines above, though one can’t help but wonder how a mortal coil might sting. The image conjured up, at least for me, is of a creature part snake (coil), part scorpion (painful sting), and part honeybee (casts off its mortal coil upon inflicting painful sting). There’s just enough of Hamlet here to give a reader pause and to make her lean over to the bookcase. How did that speech go?
“To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them.” (Hamlet, III, I, 55)
Ah, that’s better. Of course, no one can write like Shakespeare, even now four hundred years after his death. Not a person. And, thankfully, not a chatbot—not yet. The above “soliloquy” fragments were composed by a chatbot, ChatGPT, in the course of an “interview” with New Yorker–journalist Andrew Marantz (from whose recent article I’ve extracted the soliloquy fragments).
You probably know what a chatbot is. I didn’t know for sure and had to look it up. Apparently Siri (on your iPhone) and Alexa (who’ll buy stuff for you at Amazon or play you music) are both chatbots—a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that interacts with customers via natural language, i.e. talk or text. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, “a chatbot is a computer program designed to have a conversation with a human being, especially over the internet.”
So chatbots can have conversations. They can also compose Shakespearean soliloquys. Sort of. Bad soliloquys. Somewhat clumsy rip-offs, that don’t quite come off. But they’re getting smarter, more intelligent, all the time. There’s no telling what they’ll be capable of. And the pace of AI evolution seems to be speeding up. Futurism.com, among others, has said that AI will bring about the “biggest transformation in human history,” a development with consequences far greater than other revolutionary steps in the history of human progress, including the intentional use of fire, the invention of agriculture, the industrial revolution, and the invention of computers.
I can’t help but wonder, if AI does progress to the extent that it is able to create great literature (I understand it is already writing convincing term papers), and all by itself—or in response to a spoken or typed or tapped request from a human—what might an AI Shakespeare look like? What kind of stories would that writer tell? Would they be a mélange of what it knows from all our gazillions of books, fed into its infinite databases? Or would it be something else entirely, the product of its own unique experience of existence? A literature of light that will describe worlds of which we do not even dream?
The featured image, called forth from the void by the type-written prompt “Shakespeare as Chatbot,” is AI-generated artwork, in low resolution, made on nightcafe.studio.
Shakespeare’s “No” and the Allure of Denial
“…yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” –Ulysses, James Joyce
In any discussion of the “no,” it seems worthwhile to consider the opposite, as a point of reference.
“…yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” –Ulysses, James Joyce
In any discussion of the “no,” it seems worthwhile to consider the opposite, as a point of reference.
The most famous “yes” in Western literature is the last word of James Joyce’s landmark seven-hundred-plus-page novel. It is a yes about which essays and, no doubt, books have been written. It is an expansive yes, a warm-blooded, open-armed yes, spoken by the character Molly Bloom—the novel’s “Penelope” to Leopold Bloom’s “Ulysses”—a yes that, at once, invites and suggests a universe. And yet, it is, also, an end—the end. To a very long novel. A satisfactory finish after which a reader, having at last come to this point, can with a smile close the book. “Yes” doesn’t lead to questions. It doesn’t provoke action or invite further development. It suggests acceptance, resolution, perhaps even happiness…if not exactly happily ever after.
If a word of affirmation can resoundingly conclude a great story, what might a word of negation do? Those who have read books about the craft of writing fiction already know one answer. The no, counterintuitively, is what makes so many stories go. A character wants something. If she gets that something immediately, by simply asking for it, the story ends; or, rather, there is no story. Alternately, a character is told, “no”—whether by an inner voice or another person, or by society, or by the gods, or by nature; that person must then overcome her antagonist, an opposing force or forces, to get what she wants or needs, and the story is made. The struggle, the overcoming the no, is the story; and the resolution is how things turn out in the end. The yes.
With very little ado, Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra serves up (as if upon a platter of delights) a wonderful and enticing buffet of no’s right at the beginning, spending most of Act I, Scene I, on the pleasures of denial. The play’s very first word, spoken by Philo is—serendipitous for me—“Nay”!
Line one and two: “Nay, but this dotage of our general’s / O’erflows the measure …”
Philo speaks to Demetrius, in Cleopatra’s palace, about their mutual friend Mark Antony, a great warrior and descendent of Hercules, whose “dotage” involves excessive indulgences in the pleasures of the flesh provided by the beautiful and sensuous Egyptian queen. Philo would have his general back as the brave commander he has been in times past, rather than this “strumpet’s fool,” who languishes in love. This is Philo’s wish, though not explicitly spoken. The answer, expressed by the scene to follow, is this: no.
Antony and Cleopatra enter. We are only ten lines in. Their exchange speaks to the theme:
Cleopatra: “If it be love indeed, tell me how much.”
Antony: “There’s beggary in the love that can be
reckon’d.”
Antony denies the queen; in this, we hear from him his first no. He will not satisfy her question. To give her the measure of his love, a finite figure or amount, would be the end of this game or story, and they both want their love play to continue. As they verbally tussle in debate, a messenger arrives: word from Rome for Antony. He doesn’t want to hear it, knowing it comes either from Cesar or his own wife, Fulvia—messages from neither expected to be good news and likely to disturb his pleasure. A no allows him to forestall disruption.
Naturally provocative, Cleopatra pushes, with yet another no to meet his own:
“Nay, hear them, Antony.
Fulvia perchance is angry; or who knows
If the scarce-bearded Cesar have not sent
His pow’rful mandate to you: ‘Do this, or this;
Take in that kingdom, and enfranchise that;
Perform’t, or else we damn thee.’” (I. i., 23)
Antony demurs. Cleopatra insists: “You must not stay here longer…Call in the messengers…” He says, no, yet again; more colorfully:
“Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the rang’d empire fall! Here is my space,
Kingdoms are clay…
…the nobleness of life
Is to do thus [embracing Cleopatra]…” (37)
His no prolongs the banquet of their lovemaking.
Cleopatra, still unsatisfied, unconvinced or wishing to hear more, dismisses his words: “Excellent falsehood!” This pulls from him his most exuberant protestation:
“But stirr’d by Cleopatra.
Now for the love of Love, and her soft hours,
Let’s not confound the time with conference harsh;
There’s not a minute of our lives should stretch
Without some pleasure now. What sport to-night?” (47)
She prods, a final time: “Hear the ambassadors.” But he refuses still, and says: “No messenger but thine, and all alone, / To-night we’ll wander through the streets….” And, to the messenger who lingers: “Speak / not to us.” So saying, they exit, followed by the messenger, who will get no satisfaction, no answer on that night. And we, the audience, must wait, and wonder upon that message—and what comes next.
Coriolanus and the Perils of People Pleasing
Was Coriolanus a “people pleaser?” If you’ve read this one or seen it performed, your first answer might be to say, no. Not by a long shot.
Was Coriolanus a “people pleaser?” If you’ve read this one or seen it performed, your first answer might be to say, no. Not by a long shot.
Coriolanus, as the play of the same name begins, is a great warrior of Rome who, born Caius Martius, earns his resonant cognomen as a laurel for—as Shakespeare narrates the feat—single handedly defeating the city of Corioles as his cowardly troops go the other way. On returning to Rome, beyond his new name, he is honored with a nomination to the role of consul, a position of authority and prestige. A ceremonial obligation is put to him, the fulfillment of which will allow for his election and elevation: show us and the people your wounds, tell us what wonders you have done for us. This is his reply:
“… Your honors’ pardon;
I had rather have my wounds to heal again
Than hear say how I got them.” (II. ii., 67)
But this is unacceptable. He is urged by all around him to relent, to give the people what they require, and he in turn will receive their adulation and their votes. He refuses. He will not beg for their love and he will not show them his wounds. For this, beyond being denied the high station of consul, he is, at first, threatened with execution by being thrown off a precipitous rock, then, instead, he is banished from Rome, from whence he goes, leaving behind mother, wife, child, and country for the wilderness (briefly) as a kind of animal or dragon who will not play the games of politics.
Coriolanus chooses banishment to pandering and self-promotion, the desert to the sacrifice of his convictions. These are not the actions of a people pleaser, it would seem. But there are still two acts left to go.
Critics who admire the play as a great work of art and an eloquent testament to Shakespeare’s mastery of tragedy often say the protagonist is a kind of brute or child. He is a mighty fighter unschooled in the ways of peace; he does not have the maturity to live in a society with people who hold values that he finds wanting and ignoble. His ideals are pure and rigid. He cannot “make it work” or “get along” with others unless they see the world as he does. These phrases make it work, get along, people pleaser, are from our time, of course, and not Shakespeare’s (late 1500s, early 1600s), much less that of the historical Coriolanus (fifth century BCE), and yet they are timeless in their meaning and offer a useful way to look at this figure.
From where we consider these matters in the twenty-first century, we generally agree it’s no good to be a people pleaser. To be one means to have compromised integrity, to crave approval rather than to accept the call to struggle for self-affirmation and to find and hold firm to one’s own convictions. But, that said, we also acknowledge that to be human is to be imperfect. To be a person in the world is to sometimes seek the approval of others, to doubt one’s own convictions, and to crave affirmation from outside of oneself. A person must be flexible, right?
Coriolanus, toward the end of the play—now a general who leads against Rome the Volscians, those ones whose city he laid waste and from which he earned his name—is likened by Cominius, his former commander, to a divinity:
“If
He is their god; he leads them like a thing
Made by some other deity than Nature,
That shapes man better; and they follow him
Against us brats with no less confidence
Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,
Or butchers killing flies.” (IV. Vi., 90)
Army at his back, Rome trembles before him. The city is his for the taking, for the burning. Nothing stands in his way; not Cominius, who asks that he stand down; not Menenius, the father-figure in his life, to whom he will not even speak.
He only gives in when his mother, Volumnia, comes to him, along with Coriolanus’s wife and child, a potent trinity, who get down on their knees to beg for mercy, for his love and duty as son, husband, and father. And suddenly he doubts. He too is human, not a god. He cannot help but want to please his mother. And, for this, people pleaser at last, he pays the ultimate price—as the citizens of Corioles, re-awakened to their hatred of this ravager of their city, and the Volscian soldiers, denied their revenge upon Rome, see in him a weakened, compromised figure and put him to the sword.
Image credit: Volumnia Pleading with Coriolanus, by Richard Westall, Oil on Canvas, ca. 1800. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)
What’s in a Name
“… O, be some other name! / What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet …” —Romeo and Juliet II.ii, 42 (references to Shakespeare’s writing here and throughout are to the text of The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974).
“Shakespeare and a Cup of Coffee” is not the name I had first for the title of my blog. It was, rather, “Shakespeare for Breakfast,” which I thought smart, with several suggested obvious meanings. I could eat Shakespeare for breakfast…